Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/January 2017

Wiki Mural project

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I have long been fascinated by mural at: http://visualinsight.net/_engelbart/engelbart_mural.jpg Inspired by this mural, Big History projects, the book Evolution of Everything, and the book consilience I am struggling to create an analogous mural, in a similar style illustrating the causal chain, as we best understand it, beginning from the big bang and particle physics in the lower left-hand corner and spanning toward the human condition in the upper right-hand corner. I am currently using PowerPoint, because I am familiar with it, but it is not a Wiki Media compatible tool, and it does not invite collaboration in the style of a wiki. I would like to see a Wiki Mural project created that would invite editors to collaborate in creating, refining, editing, and updating large graphics. A simple, but rather unsatisfactory, approach would be to create a large, many-celled table and place text or images in cells at the appropriate location. This would be tedious and rather ugly. What ideas do you have? What might be developed? How might a "canvas" be implemented that would allow editors to place text, hyperlinks, and images in a way that can be shared and collaboratively edited? Thanks!--Lbeaumont (discusscontribs) 20:48, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds like a project for Inkscape, which create editable svg files.--Guy vandegrift (discusscontribs) 04:42, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for suggesting Inkscape; it is a very powerful tool. I used it to create a mural, now available at: https://archive.org/details/PrintEmergence I uploaded only the pdf of the mural because it is compact and accessible. I have the svg version and I am willing to share it, however it is quite large (more than 31 m) and I'm not sure there is a receptive repository for it. Although Inkscape is an excellent graphics tool, I'm not clear how to use it as a wiki. Specifically, the wiki features we are so familiar with, including a history log, comparison capabilities, roll back capabilities, etc. are missing from Inkscape. Perhaps this sort of history tracking is more an attribute of the resulting file, e.g. the svg file, than it is the tool. None the less, I don't yet see a clear path to multi-user wiki-style editing of a mural. I welcome suggestions for a next step to take here. Thanks! --Lbeaumont (discusscontribs) 18:16, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You say the size is 31 m. Is that meters? If so, the size in of the *.svg file kilobytes is all that matters. If it was made in vector form, the svg file might not be that big. The svg format also hosts bitmapped images, and if your mural is a bitmapped converted into svg, there might be no reason to upload it as svg. Do you know how to upload images to Commons or Wikiversity files?--Guy vandegrift (discusscontribs) 21:28, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WOW! 23.000 ARTICLES!

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Wow! English Wikiversity has 23.000 articles! Now, at the moment has 36,722 articles. Well done to us!--Πανεπιστήμιο (discusscontribs) 14:30, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quite an accomplishment! Wonder if we can hit 30,000 articles by 2018! ---Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 14:43, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New way to edit wikitext

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James Forrester (Product Manager, Editing department, Wikimedia Foundation) --19:31, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Research/Science in Wikimedia

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Hallo everyone! I would like to know if it is possible develop here a research project between phd students from different countries. The idea would be define the goals of the project and write the development, conclusions and tests in Wikiversity. Is it possible? Or it is necessary create a kind of "wikiresearch" or "wikisciende" project of wikimedia? Thanks! --PolStark (discusscontribs) 18:15, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean "tests in Wikiversity"? Write the development, conclusions and tests about what? -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 21:14, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@PolStark: Yes, you can develop a research project between Ph.D. students from different countries here, assuming that the project is being developed in English. If test refers to a protocol for testing the research, that should be fine. If test refers to a type of quiz or exam about the research, that functionality is available, but quite limited at the present time. -- Dave Braunschweig (discusscontribs) 22:02, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

technology harmful for our nature and nature means all of us? how can we consider it as progress ?

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--2405:204:810D:6694:D8BC:BD86:6C:8B18 (discuss) 06:52, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

At Wikiversity you are free to explore your first assumption either in userspace and/or later as resources for learning by doing! --Marshallsumter (discusscontribs) 10:17, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PanDocElectron, Open Educational Resources and Wikiversity

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PanDocElectron is currently in the beta phase of testing. It is basically to store Open Educational Resources in Wikiversity, maintain them on Wikiversity and create e.g.

  • a webbased presentation
  • office documents and
  • serveral other formats

PanDocElectron Example:

The webbased presentation is directly download and generated from Wikiversity content. (10/2016) Length of text should be short enough, that the slides are not overpopulated. As a general pilot demo pages for math lectures at the university Koblenz Landau were created to check usability of Wikiversity maintained webbased presentations.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bert Niehaus (talkcontribs) 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Enable subpages on the Template namespace

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Currently, all template documentation pages aren't subpages, but pseudosubpages. --Felipe (discusscontribs) 20:14, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A possible project on world-building

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See our sister/parent project here Over at b:en:Wikibooks:Reading_room/Projects, someone asked about making a handbook to a fictional world of his own. While maybe some guidebook to Oz or Narnia would fit (as a kind of annotated text), making up your own fictional universe is out of scope there. I thought about it and encouraged him to give it a try here. This could actually be an instructive exercise in what it takes for world-building, designing a constructed language, etc. If there were a critical mass of participants devising a little world in public, that might be a suitable enterprise, don't you think? —Justin (koavf)TCM 04:11, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea! Many universities offer degrees in creative fiction, right? This could be about learning along those lines. (= Michael Ten (discusscontribs) 04:15, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Justin, hello Michael Ten, as the user who asked initially, Michael please take a look at the discussion Justin linked. As far as I think about it, it should not be about creative writing or the like. I sketched out the ideas and limitations over there, so, if you can think about a possibility to do the project here, I would think about it. But as far as I understand the scope of Wikiversity it's not something, that would be within projects rules, wouldn't it? Maybe... Without knowing anything about Wikiversity, do you have a course about creative writing or the like? Maybe it's suitable as an exercise? On the other hand, I would need time to specify the basics until I open up the universe to play in. I appreciate your input and motivation, thanks a lot. Regards --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 12:31, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Michael Ten It's learning if there is some type of build-up. We had an elementary school kid back in 2011 who used to edit around here. Was pretty chaotic, and all of them were nearly blocked/locked, but thankfully Wikiversity was a patient place... So that elementary kid is currently a very valuable contribute @globalwiki. That's the beauty of this wikimedia project, you won't find true help (editing-wise) unless you're here. :) So similarly, I think HirnSpuk could find this project best as to what he is wanting to do.
HirnSpuk I say, Be Bold! If there are no resources that hold as a placeholder for what you're searching ("sci-fi setting to play a RPG in"), then make one here. I don't see a problem with this, but I think it'd be better to get User:Dave Braunschweig's input just to make sure this is alright - (he's the "head" custodian, you could say). -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 15:42, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot everyone. To be bold: This is the warmest welcome I had in any WM-Project this far. I'm not into being bold anymore, because of the experiences I made in other (let's face it: german :-)) projects. Thanks for the advice, so at least I'll wait for an opinion by Dave. If he is positive I'll try to sketch out some basics on my user page, let's say for the next 6 months or so to prepare for launch. Or is there something like a "project-incubator" here? Regards --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 15:51, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@HirnSpuk: Just your userspace. I'd recommend sketching out some things there. And also possibly recruiting other users who are interested in fiction writing, science fiction, world-building, constructed languages, etc. —Justin (koavf)TCM 16:03, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity's mission is to create and host free learning materials and activities. This project certainly appears to be within the Wikiversity mission. As HirnSpuk suggests and Koavf supports, a personal project should probably be hosted in user space until it is ready for participation by others. When participation by others is welcome, the project should move to main space and then clarify in the project introduction what type of participation is encouraged. There have been incubator projects from time to time, but user space seems to be a better choice until the project is ready for participation by others.

Note that there is no leadership hierarchy at Wikiversity. Everyone is encouraged to lead by example. Let us know if you have any questions or need any assistance. -- Dave Braunschweig (discusscontribs) 16:14, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Dave Braunschweig: Thanks for the opinion and the explanation. @Koavf: Yes, right. Brainstorming for a possible project path include for me at the moment: Try and match the Scope to Wikiversity and write a meaningful project-description, sketch out Project-Guidelines and a Project-timeline, start fleshing out the details to build, let's say, a skeleton to work with. After that I would ask for additional input and try to recruit other users. Do you think this could work? I understand Dave's opinion in that way. In the future I would like to actively promote the idea to creative users, maybe, say deviantart, for starting direct content-creation. Hopefully, if everything works out as hoped for, viral marketing will do the rest (sadly at the cost of probably more vandalism). @Atcovi: Maybe I was to reluctant, so please forgive me, I'll be happy if you're watching the progress, giving input.
After you all favour the idea, my next step will be: waiting for more opinions, and, if no strong objection appears, start in above described way in my user space within this month. Regards --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 16:34, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@HirnSpuk: I think the educational value is two-fold: one of them is the process of fiction-writing and the other is the ability of others to view how this process comes together. Like so many of the projects here, if there isn't a critical mass of eyes, then it's not a success but we can't have any successes without trying. It would be interesting if you deliberately devised a lot of characters explicitly for reuse and free culture like w:en:Jenny Everywhere. —Justin (koavf)TCM 16:54, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: Yes I already have those two points in mind (process of writing and viewing the process). These are probably the two most important things to think about while sketching the project. Additionally I'm thinking about training creative processes, creative cooperation, decision making, improvisational theatre and the like. I'm thinking about a multi-level-project, that may have value in more than one field. I think the idea of simply a "canon on a fictional world" needs to be expanded to be of truly educational purpose as a course or training material. Thanks for the link to w:en:Jenny Everywhere and the idea. I didn't know about this. This is such a valuable resource especially in this context. Regards --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 17:09, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, a few questions, to help me thinking. Probably there will be more, but as far as I understood, I'm in the right place?! Thanks for your time. Regards --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 16:55, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The project would be mainly classifiable as original research, is there any other starting point, I should be aware of, than Wikiversity:Research? --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 16:55, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is the following scenario conceivably possible: The Project is a success with let's say 100 participants, the process is running, a canon is built, research thrives, creative works are build in multiple ways, tracked here with a link-list; now let's suppose somebody makes a classical movie for movie-theatres out of the canon-information (earning money). Can the "Project-Manager" (or how do you call it? Or who else could, if anyone?) specify that in the credits of derivative works not all participants need to be mentioned? Can one specify, that mentioning participants is only mandatory for a specific list of participants, that is a subpage of the project, when reusing the information? The reason behind this question is, that I think it's pretty tedious to extract all participants from version history, to cover the CC name-mentioning thing (this is a really big concern and strong argument e. g. on de.wikibooks). Even more with a diversity of subpages. So to not stop content creators from using the information on this behalf I would like to provide an easy to use, self-servicing (meaning anyone who wants his or her name mentioned in connection with the work need to sign the list) copy-paste-template for this purpose. I think it's worth thinking about this prior to anything else. If every user who just changed orthography has to be extracted from Version-History it would probably get next to unusable. (By the way, without using search engines, can anyone point me to some good english orthography, typography and grammar sources, for I'm not a native speaker?) --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 16:55, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Let's suppose any creative work is build upon the project and it is a monetary success, would it be appropriate to ask the creatives for donations from the revenue for Wikimedia (not on a case by case basis, but generally in the project)? --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 16:55, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good questions. I encourage you to review https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en . All Wikiversity written content is currently contributed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. The short answer is that everyone who contributes is entitled to attribution (BY), and any derivative works must be shared the same way (SA). It is not possible to limit attribution. You could encourage donations, but there is no way to require it.
I suspect the bigger challenge in creating a movie would be the SA requirement. It would be possible to distribute a movie, but anyone would be free to copy the movie as open content, meaning that there would be little support in terms of a profit model. -- Dave Braunschweig (discusscontribs) 17:44, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the hints! I do know the license and reviewed it again. As far as I understand it: "The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner" of your provided link does not contradict the idea of relieving content-creators to research all and every author, if and only if this is clearly stated, before any author contributes to the specific part. I'm thinking about giving wikiversians (do you call them like this?) a hint like: If you edit Section X you agree that attribution of reproductions and adaptions is done as specified in Section Y. Where in Section Y are copy-paste-formulations to adhere to attribution say something like: "If you base any creative work on the information given in Section X it will be, according to "reasonable manner" of Section 4(c) of the CC-BY-SA 3.0, sufficient to state "within the work" in a place of your choice: "This work is licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 based on a community-driven World-building-Project of Wikimedia. The Project itself and all contributing Authors can be found online at URL, including subpages." I would be more precise, separating a few more cases in the actual document, but to show, what I'm thinking about. Do you agree?
So no rule is against asking for Donations. That's good. The challenge of making an Adaption financially beneficial will fall into the responsibility of the respective creative or team of creatives. If they don't manage to make it profitable it's not likely, they are going to donate, sure. But actually I think this is a good thing, because on the other hand it keeps people from maximising profit by marketforclosure. It is probably a good idea to add this possible thinking as a research topic into the project, let's say, a research-branch, something like "Structures to profit from open-license content" or the like. Actually I'm thinking about asking contributors not only to create a world, but think about implications and boundaries, e. g. if the original trigger of this project generates or destroys value, profit and benefit and if so, for whom.
Next question: If I understand it correctly, page protection is not limited to Administration? So research papers can be protected by users (which even is considered normal, if I understand the help pages correctly). I suppose, to be granted the right to protect, you need to be active a specific period, I just tried on my user page and suppose, the reason I'm not allowed to at the moment is, because I'm not active long enough.
Thanks for input and advice. Regards --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 12:37, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
My personal recommendation would be to not mention licensing. Anyone who contributes will "irrevocably agree to release [their] contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License" when they save their changes. Adding your own wording just gives attorneys something to argue about.
Special:ListGroupRights lists the group membership required for specific rights. Protection requires curator or custodian membership. Research papers cannot be protected by regular users, and Wikiversity does not protect content unless it is subject to repeated vandalism. There is a "Permanent link" option on the left side of each content page that supports capturing specific versions if this capability is required.
I am somewhat concerned that your line of questions has less to do with how to create free and open content than it does in making the content less free and less open. Please consider carefully whether CC-BY-SA is the way you want to go. If your intention is to share whatever you are creating freely with everyone, this may be the right place to do that. If you feel it is necessary to place limits on the content, this probably isn't the best place to develop this effort. -- Dave Braunschweig (discusscontribs) 14:24, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for telling your concerns. I will definitively think about them. But please let me clarify some points:
  • The question about protection arose around this page: Wikiversity:Original_research#Page_protection. And it (the protection) is on my behalf clearly and foremost thought about for original research papers published on and within the scope and terms of Wikiversity. Therefore it can be reviewed in a fixed state and stays that way for further work to build upon it.
  • Additionally one could think about protecting other pages but not to block people from using it freely under CC-BY-SA 3.0, just to limit the process of change. I mean, where would be the purpose in creating a world and the world changes always. In an extreme, to me, this would be the same as everyone creating his/her own world, but not creating cooperatively one world, wouldn't it? The project, as I see it, should be about the creation of the world and freely using this "ressource" creatively in external creative works, but not changing it constantly. But I suppose protection in this regard would neither be necessary (only temporary in case of extended vandalism) nor reasonable (because minor edits for improvement would be locked out, too). On the other hand, I see – as mentioned above – a strong necessity for protection of research and process pages, not that I want single contributors to see it as mandatory.
  • But obviously I got the protection thing wrong, so I apologize. How is this process then handled around here? How will a review be possible at all, if an original research paper could be subject to constant change? I'm not quite sure how to interpret the according pages, any help and advice will be highly appreciated.
  • Generally I see quite the opposite: More free, more open. Instead of hindering creatives using the information in asking for a tedious process in filtering out all the contributors and listing them, I'd like to ask for a small compromise on both sides (which wouldn't violate the license, as far as I understand it), so everybody can dive hassle-free into their respective field of interest. I would think, if you think it's not possible to ease the process of attribution, the project won't be possible, will it? I'm open for suggestions, how to tackle the problem in a way I did not think about until now.
  • For that purpose I add a little example of the process, as if I understand it at the moment:
    • We are 5 years in the future. Some artist want to draw a comic about the "universe". For this purpose he needs the Information of 12 Race-Pages, 2 Planet-Pages, 8 Technology-Pages (i'll keep it with this amount for the moment but suppose it could be even more). He/she than has to generate a list of all contributers for 22 Pages, let's say 5 per page, meaning he needs a list of 110 Names to add to his comic-book, because of the attribution. This means: Learning and using a techtool to extract and tidy up 22 Lists from Version history (I don't think anyone would do this manually), combining them to a document, that fits his purpose and adding this to his comic. I suppose the author won't do something like this. Let alone if more compilation is needed in case of more information used. Did I get anything wrong? Does anybody possibly have a clever idea to "solve" this problem?
Hope that clarifies it a bit. Thanks and best regards --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 15:59, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity:Original_research#Page_protection is nothing more than adding a template at the top of the page that, in effect, says, "Please don't change this page without discussing with the primary author first." It doesn't actually protect the page. If anything, it just warns users that edits are likely to be reverted if not discussed first. By convention, we typically no longer use even this type of protection on a main page. It would generally either be a subpage of a main page or a user page / subpage. And with that, the pages are left alone unless it's vandalism, and most of that is cleaned up pretty quickly. But more help checking vandalism is always welcome.

A review of a particular page version is always possible using Permanent links. For example, see [1] for this page as of your last edit, and [2] for the change (diff) you made.

A hyperlink may be used for attribution, according to Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content. You should check for a similar link somewhere on meta: to ensure that policy applies across Wikimedia projects. But please don't ask us for compromise on this. It is not something we control. You would need to work with Wikimedia itself rather than Wikiversity on any licensing concerns you have. -- Dave Braunschweig (discusscontribs) 02:38, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for the help and clarification, then I misunderstood. I intended to use the template only on subpages for sure. But it's not that important, it could be handled anyway. I was aware of permanent links, but did not think of the opportunity to use them in that way. Maybe it's worth combining permanent links with the mentioned template, but that are details, that could easily be worked out later.
More important to me is the attribution-problem. Because, as I said, I want to encourage people outside wikimedia – especially in other media forms like print, audio and film – to use the information, not leaving it, just because they are unsure how to attribute in a proper manner. My understanding was, that every project handles this in their own fashion, but I did not think about checking it with meta. I'll do that. When I found a sufficient solution I'll begin sketching out the project, inform you about the process and presenting the final version here, for you to review. Then you all will probably better be able to judge if it's a fit here, or not. I didn't want to ask for a general compromise, but for the contributors to the specific project, but I'll get to that in more detail, after I thought more about it and reviewed all the information you gave. It will hopefully be much clearer within the project-sketch.
Thanks a lot again and have a nice weekend. Regards --HirnSpuk (discusscontribs) 00:04, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What World University and School would like to develop in Wikiversity

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Hi All (and Lydia :),

Nice to chat at WikiDev SF just now - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit/2017/Program.

To begin, CC World University and School would like to develop CC MIT OpenCourseWare in its 7 languages and CC Yale OYC to Wikiversity.

CC WUaS seeks to accredit on CC MIT OCW in its 7 languages - https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm & https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/translated-courses/ & http://oyc.yale.edu/courses - to create major universities in all countries' main languages to offer free CC Bachelor, Ph.D., law, M.D. and I.B. high school degrees in all ~200 countries' main and official languages - the "Harvards/MITs/Stanfords of the web". WUaS also seeks to develop in all 7,097 living languages as wiki schools for open teaching and learning.

World University and School's main areas for growth re Wikiversity, furthermore, lie in the ~ 10 main areas here - worlduniversityandschool.org.

How best to develop this?

Thank you! Scott WUaS (discusscontribs) 01:02, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Do you plan to administer exams? If not, how will you assess student competency?--Guy vandegrift (discusscontribs) 01:13, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are some options available and several conflicts with this proposal. Wikiversity's mission is to create and host free learning materials and activities. Free and open courses and learning projects may be developed and hosted here. However, Wikiversity is explicitly not a degree-granting institution and no mention of degrees would be accepted in relation to these courses. Wikiversity also does not accept solicitation for external organizations or websites, so there could not be any content or links promoting CC WUaS. Most importantly, according to http://worlduniversityandschool.blogspot.com/2016/01/14-planned-wuas-revenue-streams.html, WUaS appears to be designed to generate revenue based on free and open courseware. This is in direct opposition to the Wikiversity goal to "set learning free".-- Dave Braunschweig (discusscontribs) 01:54, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Guy_vandegrift World University and School is planning to accredit on CC MIT OCW in its 7 languages and CC Yale OYC with WASC senior to begin, emerging from Wikidata potentially with Wikiversity as a front end. In the accreditation process, WUaS will seek to build on the exams in MIT OCW in English itself, as well as hire graduate student instructors to lead interactive sections in group video in the process of becoming faculty; graduate students in sections will do some of the grading. Graduate students teaching sections also gets accredited, for example, at Stanford and UC Berkeley (which WASC also accredits. The WUaS faculty for accreditation will therefore initially be the MIT and Yale faculty in video in the CC OpenCourseWare. Scott WUaS (discusscontribs) 03:26, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dave_Braunschweig CC WUaS will host only free CC OCW with potentially Wikiversity as a "front end" and in a WUaS-planned template in which to embed the course parts only of CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC. This will potentially emerge from Wikidata, and MIT OCW and Yale OYC themselves, into the front end of Wikiversity. This Wikiversity conversation emerges from this Wikidata conversation - https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#What_World_University_and_School_would_like_to_add_to_Wikidata . As you'll see here, CC WUaS donated itself to CC Wikidata in October 2015, and began developing in CC MediaWiki from January - March 2016 ... Scott WUaS (discusscontribs) 03:41, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Scott WUaS: I want to reiterate. You are welcome to create open content at Wikiversity. That content cannot refer to degrees and it cannot mention or link to WUaS. -- Dave Braunschweig (discusscontribs) 04:16, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Dave Braunschweig: CC WUaS (accrediting on CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC) will explore this and other options. Scott WUaS (discusscontribs) 04:38, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]